Parents, Media and Panic through the Years by Karen Leick

is familiar. Variations of this nostalgic vision are repeated in articles, in the comments sections of these articles, blogs, and really anywhere the subject of “kids these days” is discussed. Writers describe childhoods in the 60s, 70s, and 80s as idyllic, creative paradises where activities were almost exclusively outdoors and unsupervised. In fact, the above quote suggests that even in the 90s—just 20 years ago—this kind of play was the norm, and that there has been an enormous shift in the ways young people spend their time. If such a change had indeed occurred, we might expect the many articles published in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s that also discuss childhood development, imagination, and play would celebrate this healthy atmosphere, which must have benefited my generation so greatly (I was born in 1971). Yet, a glance at popular periodicals of those decades reveals something quite different. You find no mention of this delightful trend, so strongly remembered by today’s adults. Actually, it turns out that parents and childhood experts were more than a little uncomfortable with the way kids were spending their free time in the 60s and 70s: in fact, if popular media and scholarly studies are any indication, they were panicked. According to parents, children were not spending healthy, unlimited time creatively playing outside. They were spending almost all of their free time, from 20 to 30 hours a week, watching television. In the 1970s, articles routinely remarked that by